Robinhood co-founder’s Cowboy Space raises $275M led by Index Ventures to take on SpaceX and Blue Origin amid ‘AI in orbit’ race — TFN

• Cowboy House Company has raised $275 million in a Sequence B spherical led by Index Ventures, reaching a $2 billion valuation.
• Based in 2024 by Baiju Bhatt, co-founder of Robinhood, the corporate is constructing orbital knowledge centres and rockets to run AI compute in house.
• The contemporary funding will probably be used to speed up the deployment of space-based AI infrastructure

Earth’s computing programs are underneath pressure because the demand for AI grows. Information facilities are dealing with points with energy limits, cooling, and an absence of house. Nonetheless, Cowboy House Company believes the reply may not be on Earth in any respect.

The California-based startup has raised $275 million in a Sequence B funding spherical, pushing its valuation to $2 billion.

The spherical was led by Index Ventures, with participation from traders together with IVP, Blossom Capital, and SAIC, alongside present backers similar to Andreessen Horowitz and Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

Based in 2024 by Baiju Bhatt, greatest often called the co-founder of Robinhood, the corporate is taking a special strategy to fixing the AI infrastructure drawback.

As an alternative of constructing extra knowledge facilities on land, Cowboy House is designing programs that function straight in orbit.

The concept is a completely built-in system that mixes satellites, rockets, and computing {hardware}. The corporate is growing a community of low Earth orbit satellites powered by photo voltaic vitality, together with its personal launch car to ship them into house. Every unit is designed to behave as a one-megawatt knowledge middle as soon as in orbit.

What makes this strategy totally different is how tightly every thing is linked. The rocket and the information middle are designed as a single system, relatively than separate parts. This reduces weight, improves effectivity, and maximizes the quantity of computing energy that may be delivered into house.

“Our strategy begins from a clean sheet, the place the distinctive necessities of information facilities in orbit drive the shape and performance of the general system. The rocket and the information middle are a single design from day one. It’s a first-principles departure from the normal constellation mannequin,” says Bhatt. 

Cowboy can also be collaborating with NVIDIA to deploy NVIDIA House-1 Vera Rubin Modules, bringing state-of-the-art AI infrastructure to the Low Earth Orbit surroundings.

The corporate plans to launch its first satellite tv for pc to orbit later this 12 months to exhibit space-to-Earth energy beaming. Its workforce contains engineers from its rivals like SpaceX in addition to Astranis, NASA, Kuiper, and NVIDIA.

“Baiju has a confirmed observe report of reimagining huge markets from first ideas, and his lifelong ardour for physics makes house the final word market alternative for that ambition/ We’re excited to again the workforce as they execute on this imaginative and prescient,” says Jan Hammer, associate at Index Ventures, mentioned the fund had been on the lookout for an organization innovating on the intersection of AI compute and vitality infrastructure earlier than backing Cowboy at Sequence A. 

The brand new funding will assist Cowboy House transfer sooner on its roadmap. The corporate plans to launch its first satellite tv for pc later this 12 months, aiming to exhibit space-to-Earth energy transmission whereas testing its broader infrastructure mannequin.